


Survivor's Guilt

by tsuwundere



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Post-Canon, Survivor Guilt, i guess, kokichi literally made god a character in this. love that for him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29565174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuwundere/pseuds/tsuwundere
Summary: Kokichi defies the laws of the universe to stop Shuichi's spiraling.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings: hallucinations, suicide ment, unsanitary (vomit). take care

“…Shuichi.”

“Hey, Shuichi.”

“Shuuuuuichi~!”

_Again._

“Earth to Shuichi!”

It was happening again.

Pulling his comforter further over his head, Shuichi rolled over in bed. He pressed his face suffocatingly into his pillow. His eyelids were far too heavy with sleep to deal with this for the _fourth_ night in a row.

It was really beginning to get ridiculous now. But Kokichi never shied away from absurdity before, he supposes, and he couldn’t see why he would start now.

“Go away.” Shuichi murmurs into his pillow.

“That’s not nice. Think about my feelings for once.”

He sighs, rolls onto his back and pulls his comforter back down to his chin. “Why would I do that? You’re not real.”

“What happened to me was real, though.” The image of Kokichi at his bedside finally pops into his vision.

Shuichi blinks, and he’s gone again; only the image of his ceiling dimly illuminated by moonlight that filtered in through a crack in his curtains remaining.

“I don’t want to talk about that again.”

“I do! Where should we begin? How about the pain? I remember it well,” Kokichi voice echoes from somewhere beyond Shuichi’s headboard. He’s too exhausted to look. Kokichi doesn’t sit in one place anyway. He never did.

“No… Not that. I don’t… I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it.”

“You don’t care.” Kokichi sounds close again. Dangerously so. Shuichi still doesn’t look. “I mean you’ve demonstrated that much to me agonisingly well before. Should we talk about that instead, then?”

Shuichi closes his eyes, and finds Kokichi in the darkness there, too.

“No.”

“I especially liked that one line you gave me while Kaito was puking blood. What was it again? Can you remind me?”

Swallowing the lump forming in his throat, Shuichi says, “I can’t say. I don’t remember.”

Kokichi’s tone of voice shifted into something frightening. “That’s a dangerous excuse to use. It was one of the last things you ever said to me, you know? How could you forget something like that? Did I mean that little to you?”

Shuichi doesn’t say anything. He blinks, and Kokichi, now cross-legged on Shuichi’s windowsill, smiles. It’s an insidious smile, yet it shone brighter than the moonlight he was bathed in as he sat, perched there. That only scares Shuichi more.

“Welp, it’s not a problem! Because I remember. I remember every scathing word, the exact pitch of your voice, your expression… everything. So I can remind you.”

Shuichi’s head spun. One moment he was in his bedroom, and the next he was in that sickening hellscape again, Gonta’s corpse ahead of him becoming colder by the second, Kaito’s blood splattered on the floor behind him, and right in front of him, Kokichi’s shit-eating grin that he so desperately wanted to wipe off his face in that moment more than anything else.

Shuichi’s mouth moved. He doesn’t register the words, but Kokichi’s grin does fall. Shuichi gets what he wanted, but feels no better.

“You… You killed Gonta and Miu.” Shuichi’s defense falls flat on his tongue before it even leaves his mouth.

It was no use arguing anyway. Kokichi always wins.

“Do you hate murderers, Shuichi?”

It’s a stupid question. Shuichi doesn’t grace it with acknowledgement.

“Did you hate Kaede?”

Shuichi pulls the pillow from beneath his head and flings it in Kokichi’s direction. It phases right through him, hits a shelf, the contents of which spill out onto the floor with shattering noises.

“Shut up! You don’t know anything. She didn’t kill anyone!”

Kokichi sighs from behind him. “Technically speaking, I guess not. I’m sorry, I was wrong. I know how hard you fought to clear her name so long after her death, too. I shouldn’t have said that. But no worries, I can amend this. Let’s talk about Kaito and Maki instead.”

“Knock it off.” Shuichi warned through gritted teeth, as though there was something he could do to force him to if he didn’t.

“It was so touching,” Kokichi says mockingly. “Those were such heroic words. _I don’t care if you’re sick! I don’t care if you’re dying! I won’t let Monokuma lay a finger on you!_ That’s so nice, Shuichi. So kind. You’re so kind to everyone. Even murderers. Even my murderer. I admire that.”

The next time Kokichi speaks, it’s directly into Shuichi’s ear.

_“So why wasn’t I spared any of that kindness?”_

Shuichi vomits right onto his bedding. He chokes on bile and the pungent smell, and vomits once more. Through watering eyes, he glances dazedly at the plastic bag he kept at his bedside for times like this.

“Y-Your death… was a suicide, Kokichi. He helped you.” Shuichi rasps with the little energy he had left.

“The poison-tipped arrows definitely weren’t part of any of my suicide plans throughout my life.” Kokichi shrugs. “Are you proud of your choice of friends? Was it worth torturing my feelings to protect them?”

“I… I didn’t do anything to you.”

“That’s the problem, Shuichi. You didn’t do _anything_. All you could do was parrot Kaede’s message to co-operate, with little to no attempt to actually even embody it. And somehow, it’s _my_ fault I couldn’t trust anyone enough to help me when I figured out Miu was going to try to kill me. I know fantasy from reality Shuichi, and you only made it that much more painfully obvious. I couldn’t leap into your arms and have you protect me, as much as I wanted to. You’re such a moron,” The pointer finger spitefully prodding at Shuichi’s forehead felt far too real. “What, did you think that because I didn’t cry in front of people as easily as you did, that I don’t suffer? That nothing hurts me? I wish it had been so easy for me to never think about you,”

Tears prick at Shuichi’s eyes. They had a tendency to collect, but never fall. At some point over the past two years, Shuichi had stopped crying.

“Enough already,” he begs weakly.

“My eyes were always on you, Shuichi. Even now, I want to kiss you. But I never had the best luck, did I? The boy I liked only felt relief when I died. Relief that it wasn’t his friend’s blood and guts splattered all over the floor in that cold room. Relief that it was mine, instead.”

“That’s not true!” Shuichi began, but choked on his next words. Because it _was_ true, to some extent. He _had been_ relieved to see Kaito again. But that didn’t mean he was glad that it was Kokichi that had died… did it?

“It was so painful, Shuichi. My muscles spasmed with pain as the poison circulated through my body. Poison… from your lab. Kind of poetic.” He paused. “My mouth was numb and my lungs were failing, so it hurt to even cry. But you know, Shuichi, I can understand why you can forgive them so easily. I get it – blah blah, manipulated by the mastermind, blah blah blah, trying to protect each other, blah blah, I was a piece of shit and deserved it anyway, blah blah, I set myself up for it. And whatever else you use to make yourself feel better. It’s all true. And I suppose it didn’t happen to _you_ , as well, so it’s _even_ easier for you to accept.”

“I never… I never believed that you deserved it.”

Kokichi ignores him, leaning back and hanging over the edge of his bed. “What did you hate about me so much, Shumai?” His voice was far softer now, wobbling with sincerity. Shuichi hadn’t heard that nickname in years. He wants to vomit again.

“I liked you. But you always ignored me.” Kokichi continues. “How many times did you ignore Maki choking me? Why didn’t you help when I fell through the floorboards on the fourth floor, or when Kaito punched me? Why do you never answer me when I ask you this?”

Kokichi was now curling up into a ball at the foot of Shuichi’s bed.

“I’m sorry,” Shuichi manages to say, his voice barely above a whisper. He’s lost count of the number of times he’d apologised to Kokichi in the last two years. “I was short sighted. We were all trying to look after ourselves and survive. I… You looked like a threat to that – to everybody – but I should have looked harder. You’re right. My kindness was a façade. You… should have been able to trust me. Maybe then you could have survived, maybe I could have protected you… protected _someone_. I’m so sorry.”

When Kokichi looks up, each of his pores are dripping with blood.

“It’s no use now, is it? You should have died instead, Shuichi. Screw that, you should have been the first to die. See for yourself how worthless apologies are then.” He spat, and then vanished.

Shuichi bites back a sob, and peels his soiled bedding from his body.

His clock had stopped working some time ago so Shuichi estimated the time as two o’clock in the morning and left it at that. He tore his sheets off and discarded them in the bathtub, deciding that the issue of cleaning them would be dealt with later. Later _when_ didn’t matter.

He changes his clothes, unrolls a spare futon he kept for situations like this, and lies in it. He absentmindedly stared at the ceiling for hours, even as dawn broke and the sun rose.

Shuichi wonders if he’ll get a night of restful sleep ever again.

(Or day, really, seeing as he’d become a shut-in as soon as he found his way home after the game, so there was no need to be picky about the time.)

It feels as though even during the killing game, he was able to sleep better. It had been two years since then.

At some point in the afternoon, Shuichi managed to get away somewhere behind his closed eyes. Regardless of how fleeting this would be, he was sleeping – and he was away from his grim reality.

Fleeting it was indeed. The first thing he saw was Kokichi’s form sprinting towards him through the mess of wildflowers in this space away from reality, his purple curls bouncing with every step.

Shuichi bows his head, beginning to submit before the smaller of the two even had a chance to open his mouth.

“Chin up! Or you’re going to trip!” Kokichi grabbed Shuichi by the wrist and continued to sprint in the same direction, now with Shuichi in tow.

“Wh-What are you doing?” Shuichi exclaims, bewildered.

“Running away!” Kokichi answers, _beaming_. It’s a bright, genuine, kind smile. So familiar, and _so_ warm. The tears balanced delicately on Shuichi’s waterline finally fell.

“And I’m not lying about that – I needed to talk to you but He wouldn’t let me,” Kokichi explained, out of breath.

“ _He_?”

“Yeah! _He_ , as in, God,”

Shuichi blinks.

“You’re running away from… God?”

“Yes, but never mind that now. Shuichi, I would hit you if I could. But I can’t really stop right now, or I’ll get dragged back to the afterlife. I don’t care if this extends my hell sentence. I need you to know something.”

“What is it…?” Shuichi feels brave enough to ask. He finds himself unafraid – safe, even. Like _this_ Kokichi was different…

“You’re an idiot! Were all my lies insufficient training during the time we knew each other? How can you believe that mangled hallucination in your bedroom at night is me?” Kokichi stuck his tongue out at Shuichi. “It’s an insult! You continue to hurt me way after I’m dead!”

Shuichi didn’t understand that last sentence, but it brought tears to his eyes regardless. “I-I’m sorry, I don’t understand… what you’re saying…”

“I’m saying this: stop apologising to that thing. Stop feeling sorry for it. It’s not me. It’s a product of your own misplaced guilt. Everything it says is a lie – well, except for the fact that I like you. That much is true,” Kokichi grins again, and something in Shuichi’s chest stirs.

“And it’s _because_ I like you, that I’ve already forgiven you. Nobody had it easy in that place. I mean I still think everyone was an asshole to me perhaps slightly more than necessary, but gosh dang it – I’m _dead_! I’m over it! Stop letting it eat you up – your misery isn’t going to make me any happier. It’s not going to make anybody any happier. It won’t alleviate the burdens of anyone’s regrets – dead or alive. Believing you should have died instead and living like more of a dead guy than the literal dead guys makes our sacrifices useless. You ended up surviving – you strived for so long, and for what? That?”

“So please, get up in the mornings from now on, okay, Shumai?” He squeezed their joined hands, prompting Shuichi to nod.

“O-Okay. I promise.”

“Good.” He smiled again, so gently that it pained Shuichi enough to stumble.

“Tired already? I am, too. If you get the message already, you can head back,” Kokichi slowed to halt beside Shuichi. “I’m about to eat absolute shit. I haven’t given God a break since I got here.”

For the first time in what felt like forever, Shuichi laughed. _This_ Kokichi’s behaviour was so like him, so familiar, that it flooded Shuichi’s system with a warm sense of nostalgia. He felt lighter, freer… Like he could possibly live again.

“Kokichi, thank you.” Shuichi began, tearing up once again. “You’re always saving me—”

“Save this spiel for the next time you visit my grave, Shumai,” he said lightheartedly. “I’ll always listen to you. Visit often, okay? I mean, if you want,” he added belatedly, averting his gaze to somewhere off to the side.

“No—wait, it’s kind of important,” Shuichi said in a rush as Kokichi began to fade. “I-I wanted to say, I liked you too. Despite the circumstances, I didn’t think you’d die because… because you always seemed so strong. I… I took you for granted. So I never got to apologise to you. I’m sorry. I like you.”

Kokichi’s eyes melted into something so impossibly soft that Shuichi wanted to cry. “Thank you, Shumai. Do it for me, okay? Wake up and face the sun every morning. Kind of like a sunflower, but prettier.”

“Okay,” Shuichi said, his voice breaking on the second syllable. “Okay.”

“That’s it,” Kokichi was getting farther and farther away now. “And don’t forget – I don’t blame you for anything. Understand?”

Shuichi swallowed as Kokichi’s form became barely visible.

“I forgive you, and I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> been out of ideas lately but i miss them so much


End file.
